And recognizing that our male dominated culture is fucked up doesn’t make you a self-hating man, either. When I first heard Bikini Kill, it was fucking thrilling. Hearing someone lash out against dominant sexist attitudes wasn’t exciting in some sort of “oh good for women, they’re standing up for themselves,” type of way. It was liberating to hear someone take on those traditional expressions of masculinity, because I hated the ways I was expected to act as a man. I hated the toughness and numbness that was expected from men, because I wanted to be able to express my emotions without fear of ridicule. I hated the predatory way that men acted towards women, because I wanted to be free to have meaningful relationships with women. Likewise, I hated the homophobia, because I wanted to have meaningful relationships with the men in my life. I see men around me all the time who refuse to show any signs of vulnerability for fear of appearing feminine, and they tend to cut themselves off emotionally from the world. It’s fucking sad. I see men all the time who only view their relationships in terms of conquest, and I can’t think of one of them who has a healthy emotional life. Breaking down ideas around male superiority and masculinity is absolutely in mens’ best interests. In a punk context, I can say with certainty that the scenes I’ve visited that were the most gender inclusive have always been the most exciting and thriving music communities. There’s nothing to be gained for men in maintaining the boy’s club.
David Combs
(http://www.punknews.org/article/42845)
(via rabbitsandrecords)
Thinking Ourselves into Existence
Dave is contributing a pamphlet on the practice of improvising music and utopia to Thinking Ourselves into Existence at the Glasgow Centre for Contemporary Arts. The exhibition is curated by Psykick Dancehall Recordings and Jon Marshall of Singing Knives and runs from Thursday 16th February to Wednesday 29th Februrary. There also be contributions from Paul Hegarty, author of Noise/Music: A History; Ben Watson, author of Adorno for Revolutionaries and co-founder of the Association of Musical Marxists; and future Surfacing collaborator Marie Thompson, co-editor of the forthcoming Oscillation, Echo, Affect: Sound, Music and the Organisation of Feeling, as well as an array of listening and visual materials in the space.
Dave and Marie will also be giving talks at the gallery on the 22nd February, from 7-9pm in the Vanguard (!) Space. Facebook event here, blurbs below:
David Bell
David’s talk will draw out his consideration of collective musical improvisation as a practice with the potential to create nomadic utopian spaces. He argues that the intense joys and deep frustrations often felt by improvising musicians resonate with those who try and realise such spaces in a more obviously ‘political’ sphere, and considers what might be done to enable such spaces to remain nonhierarchical and open the future.
Marie Thompson
Marie has written a manifesto hoping to highlight the intimate relationship between noise and the ‘feminine’.
Aristotle tells us that ‘Silence is a woman’s glory’. But this silence is really noise abatement. If women’s noises are to be kept in silence, since they threaten (masculine) order, then these noises also have a subversive potential: ‘her’ disruptions may become strategic.
There’s a lovely programme of gigs to accompany the exhibition as well: see Psykick Dancehall’s website for more information.
